Osun guber: NGOs, stakeholders tasks APC NWC on direct primary

As the National Working Committee (NWC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) meets on the modalities for the conduct of the party’s governorship primary election in Osun on Thursday July 19, stakeholders in the state have urged the party to select men (and women) of integrity into the state’s convention committee and adopt a direct primary method of election.

Speaking separately with newsmen in Osogbo, at the weekend, convener of a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Osun Progressives Platform (OPP), Wale Adebisi, urged the NWC to select its candidate for the September 22, 2018 governorship election directly through its registered members in order to bring inclusiveness and real democratic representation.

Adebisi, who is also the director of Ola Oni Centre for Social Research, in Osogbo, said: “APC needs to deepen democracy and inclusion of all its members in taking such important decision like the choosing of its candidate in the coming governorship election.

“The era of a few party delegates or even fewer party leaders handpicking and anointing a candidate should be done away with. A candidate that emerged from the popular and direct election in which all card-carrying members vote is the most democratic method. This will make all the party’s members vote massively for such candidate and even work for him or her enthusiastically at the election proper. At any rate, there are no delegates on ground, elected for the purpose of selecting the party’s candidate for the 2018 governorship election. It will amount to abuse of democracy to just corral some members of the party into primary election delegates,” he warned.

Speaking in the same vein, Director of Publicity for Justice Now Foundation, another NGO in Osogbo, Damola Olayinka, urged APC leadership to select people of proven integrity to conduct the primary, not those who will come to perpetrate a hidden agenda. He also lent his weight behind direct primary as the method of selecting the governorship candidate of the party.

“It is crucial for the NWC to get the composition of the committee and the method of primary election right.”

Also, Amitolu Shittu, who is the chairman of De Raufs, a non-governmental social and political grassroots movement in Osun, has warned the APC NWC of the danger of not selecting its governorship candidate through direct primary. He is of the opinion that indirect primary is undemocratic, corrupt and subject to abuse.